The books of the Saint-Germain Cycle combine
historic fiction, romance, and horror and feature the heroic vampire first introduced in
Hôtel Transylvania as Le
Comte de Saint-Germain. In this initial novel, the character -- cultured, well-traveled, articulate, elegant, and mysterious --
appears in the court of France's King Louis XV. In order to convince the naive but
intelligent Madelaine de Montalia that she is in danger, Saint-Germain reveals he is
thousands of years old and drinks the Elixir of Life, blood. He also
introduces her to the sensual pleasures of his vampiric embrace.

Yarbro intentionally
sought to get as far away as possible from the traditional vampire trope
"and still have a recognizable vampire," to use the "vampire as a
metaphor for humanism," and establish the vampire's erotic appeal as a
shared, mutual intimacy. Yarbro was the first writer
to revise the stereotype so completely and mesh it so fully with romance. She also
filtered it through
a feminist perspective that both the giving of sustenance and its taking
were of equal erotic potency. Although romantic and historical fiction, Hôtel Transylvania and
consequent novels also belong firmly within the canon of modern horror: the
mortal inhabitants of the natural world are the forces of darkness and
the supernatural "monster" is the defender of sanity and morality. As the author has noted, "history is horror."